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Sunday, January 26, 2014

New Federal Discipline Guidelines and the School-to-Prison Pipeline

We
would like to welcome you to 2014 and share with you some important news regarding
the School-to-Prison Pipeline (our current issue on the subject can be found
here). The Obama
Administration has released new federal discipline guidelines that attempt to
address racial discrimination in the administration of primary and secondary
school discipline. Extensive research conducted by the Civil Rights Division of
the Department of Justice has shed new light on this troubling issue and
established that there is clearly a racial tenor to the School-to-Prison
Pipeline. African-American students without disabilities are more likely to be
expelled or suspended than their white peers by a more than three-to-one ratio
(Department of Justice et al, 2014, p. 3). More than half of all students
arrested in schools or handed over to police for disciplinary action are Hispanic
or African-American (p. 4). As the Departments of Justice and Education frankly
admit in their 23-page letter addressed to practitioners, these disparities in
the meting out of school-related discipline are "not explained by more
frequent or more serious misbehavior of students of color" (p. 4). Unintentionally
or not, schools are engaging in racial discrimination.

The
new guidelines categorize racial discrimination in school discipline under the
headings of "Different Treatment" and "Disparate Impact."
Different treatment includes not only straightforwardly discriminatory
discipline policies, but also discriminatory enforcement of disciplinary
policies that are race-neutral on the books (e.g. if it could be established
that a school gave African-American students the full measure of disciplinary
action attached to a specific infraction whereas white students routinely
received less severe discipline for the same infraction, this would constitute
different treatment.) Determining disparate impact is a bit more complex, as it
involves a judgment of ostensibly race-neutral policies based on their impact
as well as their necessity in meeting educational goals. To establish
discrimination in this case, investigators would have to find that either: (1) a
policy was having a disparate impact on one racial group over others and did
not meet a specific educational goal (e.g. if a school policy penalized students
for wearing hats in class, this could not be reasonably connected to a specific
educational goal, and it were established that Hispanic students were
substantially more likely to wear hats in class than students of other races,
this would constitute discrimination by disparate impact); or (2) that even
though the policy in question did meet a specific educational goal, there were
alternative policies available to the school that would also meet this goal without
impacting or having less of an impact on a particular racial group
disproportionately impacted by the current policy.

Attorney General Eric Holder
said last week that “A routine school
disciplinary infraction should land a student in the principal’s office, not in
a police precinct" (NYT Editorial Board, 2014). It is encouraging to see the government
taking action on racial discrimination in schools, and we can hope that this
will also constitute a step toward dismantling the School-to-Prison Pipeline.

Find the full text of the Departments of Justice and Education's letter here:

Department of
Justice and Department of Education. (2014). Dear Colleague Letter on the Nondiscriminatory
Administration of School Discipline. U.S.
Department of Education. Retrieved
from: http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague-201401-title-vi.pdf

New York Times
Editorial Board. (2014). The Civil Rights of Children. The New York Times. Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/12/opinion/sunday/the-civil-rights-of-children.html?_r=0

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This blog is an extension of the Journal of Educational Controversy.It aims to promote a conversation between educational professionals and the general public in a pluralistic, democratic forum. Its main purposes are to:

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